Visitors of Times Square are no strangers to eye-popping advertisements, but on Tuesday night the space will up the ante with the unveiling of a block-long, 8 story-tall digital billboard, one of the biggest and most expensive of its kind. Stretching down a prime piece of Broadway real estate between 45th and 46th Streets, the billboard is the only one in the city to stretch an entire city block. Pricing for the coveted “megascreen,” which will boast close to 24 million LED pixels, starts at $2.5 million for four weeks. “People go to the Grand Canyon to see the most visually stunning natural canyon in the world. They come to Times Square to see the most digitally striking canyon in the world,” Tim Topkins, president of the Times Square Alliance, told the New York Times. According to the Times, creative agency Universal Everything will be creating an exhibition for the billboard’s debut week, before Google takes over as the space’s first advertiser on November 24. “I’m interested to see if it will stand out from all the other billboards,” pondered Lior Neu-ner, 23, upon visiting Times Square a day before the unveiling. “It’s going to be the biggest one, but it’s surrounded by so many other billboards.”
Times Square’s new football field-sized billboard to launch Tuesday night
Catharina Thuemling, Metro
